After COVID-19 brought him back to Freeport and George Floyd was murdered on Memorial Day, Denzel Woodall knew he had to act.
Those two factors motivated him to do something he had wanted to do for a long time: create a lecture series about healthcare and the Black community.
Woodall’s first lecture will be this Sunday from 2pm-4pm at Junior’s Place, a local Black-owned restaurant.
The presentation is titled “I can’t speak because it makes me weak: Physical and mental health issues in the Black community.” Woodall designed the presentation himself based on the research and coursework he has been exposed to in grad school. It will serve as an introduction to systemic racism in American healthcare.
Woodall will begin by discussing segregation in healthcare and the health gap between people of color and white people. He will also discuss how implicit bias affects the ways that doctors care for their patients, as well as common health issues in the Black community.
Woodall told The Voice that each topic he will cover this Sunday could easily be its own multi-hour lecture. He intends this first lecture to be an introduction of a few important topics of conversation.
Woodall is a life-long resident of Freeport who graduated from Freeport High School in 2013.
After graduating from Augustana College in the Quad Cities with a degree in music and neuroscience, he enrolled in a chiropractic PhD program at Cleveland University in Kansas City.
Before COVID-19 shut down in-person learning Woodall had been taking classes and working in a clinic. He is on pace to receive his PhD in December 2021.
Woodall said that he hopes his lecture series inspires people to have hard conversations about systemic racism in healthcare and in American society. “It’s not meant to make people uncomfortable, it’s just the reality of the situation”, he said.
Woodall will begin presenting at 2pm on Sunday June 12th at Junior’s Place, located at 1802 E Shawnee St in Freeport.